What better way to celebrate summer than with an X’mas Trance EP? This one mostly has songs that appeared on the Cyber Trance presents X’mas Trance series. For some reason it also has a cover of Blondie’s “Maria,” which is apparently a Christmas carol now?

Anyway, this is the last of the SBT EPs released on July 24th. It remains to be seen if Avex will keep this up and release more SBT EPs in the future.

What better way to celebrate summer than with a Summer Trance EP? And in typical Avex fashion, it has a repeat! That’s right, for no reason other than to screw people over, this has “Santa Maria (DJ Ten Remix),” even though the second EP already had it.

HOLY CRAP! It’s been 4 years since the last Super Best Trance release, so it came as quite a shock when I saw a series of new SBT releases on iTunes. Each release has 5 tracks and costs 450 yen for the entire release, which is a steal compared to the prices the vinyls have been going for. The track lists are seemingly random, pulling tracks from various SBT releases over the years. This first one has tracks from SBT V, ZIP Dance Nation, SBT II, SBT presents X’mas Trance, and Ultra Z-Trance 03.

Well, it’s not as bad as it could have been. At least Avex resisted the urge to license “Caramelldansen.” 😛

Obviously there are a ton of repeats, but it is surprising that they left off some of the more popular songs like “Heavenly Star” and “Are U Wake Up?” Instead, they’ve licensed quite a few tracks from EMI, FARM, and Quake.

There are at least 4 new J-trance tracks/remixes, the most exciting of which is a new Delaction remix of John Robinson’s “Can U Feel It?” Also noteworthy is a new collaboration between DJ Joker and Heaven’s Wire called “G-Kill.”

To recap, SBT -The Best- came out after the first four releases (SBT I-IV). SBT Request Countdown came out after another three releases (SBT V-VII). And now SBT 10 ~The Best~ will be coming out after only two releases (SBT 08 and 09). At this rate SBT 11 will be another best-of release!

For info on how to buy from mu-mo, check out Mikaeru’s very informative thread on Eurobeat Prime. Keep in mind that the files up on mu-mo are mostly 128 kbps wma files that are DRM protected. The tracks are 150 yen each, and unfortunately there’s no option to buy the entire album, so if you want all of the tracks you’ll have to shell out 3300 yen.

Am I the only one pissed that Avex mostly put up radio edits? In some cases the edits on the actual nonstop CD are longer than the “full versions”!

“Tokyo, Go” is basically the same as before, except it has new percussion and the familiar “Viva la Revolution” sample that Shohei has used many times in the past. “Who Knew” sounds really good, though.